The present invention relates to the collection, transporting, processing and reporting of information and, in particular, the collection, transporting, processing and reporting of EAS and POS information.
Upon initial installation of an EAS system, a purveyor of goods (i.e., articles or products), such as a wholesaler or retailer, typically realizes a significant return on investment (“ROI”) in the reduction of shrinkage. In this context, “shrinkage” refers to the loss of goods through the unauthorized taking or shoplifting of such goods by customers as well as employees. For an EAS system to be effective, a purveyor's employees must respond to all EAS alarms. For example, retail organizations need to be able to identify which retail locations do and do not comply with its response policies. Currently, POS and EAS systems are divergent technologies with no way to combine data into a correlated event. As a stand-alone, an EAS system helps control non-employee related shrinkage. However, a majority of retailer's shrinkage is due to internal employee theft, which is not substantially addressed by the stand-alone EAS systems.
FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional POS system 100. The system 100 includes one or more combination scanner and deactivators 102, register units 104 and a POS controller 106 connected by a POS network 108. The combination scanner and deactivator 102 can scan a product bar code label and also deactivate a tag attached to the product or to the bar code label. Once the bar code label is scanned, bar code information is provided to the register unit 104 through a link 103. The register unit 104 does not receive any information upon deactivation of the tag. The register unit 104 may query the POS controller 106 to obtain pricing for the product associated with the bar code label. These devices may be connected with other equipment through an in-store network 110. The conventional POS system 100 can flag monetary cash register exceptions such as voided transactions, returns and overcharges, but cannot identify and track shrinkage where EAS tags on goods have been deactivated but are not scanned for payment.
Purveyors who do keep track of EAS alarms conventionally use manual, paper-based logs. A conventional paper log 200 is shown in FIG. 2. When an alarm event occurs by, e.g., a customer exiting the store through or near an EAS detector, an employee may inscribe information relating to the alarm event on the paper log 200. The information may include activity information 210, such as an indicator number 212, date 214, time 216, person who entered the information, 218 and/or an activity code 220, which explains in broad terms the reason for the alarm event. The information may also include a “failure to deactivate” section 230, which is used to record the department 232, cashier information 234 and/or a public relations (“PR”) code 236. The PR code may explain the customer's reaction to the alarm event, for example whether the customer was pleasant, understanding, agitated or hostile. The paper log 200 may also record recovery data 240, such as dollar value (“$ Val.”) 242, department (“Dept.”) 244, description 246 of the product and/or reference information 248.
These logs have proven to be very inaccurate with no sure way for a purveyor, such as a retailer, to verify the correctness of the entries in the paper-based logs or cross-reference information from and to the logs. Also, it is very labor intensive, expensive and a waste of time to get these paper logs into an electronic form, and to do so for data that may not even be accurate due to human error or otherwise.
In addition to the above, more and more retailers are requiring manufacturer product source tagging. There is no known method for determining source tagging compliance other than through manual inspection of a purveyor's stock or inventory.